Maj Gen Apollo Kasita Gowa, the Director of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC) at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, has given details on the upgrade of the East African Community e-Passport.
The Republic of Uganda introduced an East African Community (EAC) e-Passport in Dec 2018, which replaced the machine-readable light blue passports.
These were paper based Passports that were presented in the following colours; Light Blue (ordinary passport), Green (service passport), and Red (diplomatic Passport).
There was a two-year transitional period to allow for a gradual phase-out of the previous Machine-Readable Passports which ended on April 04, 2021 when Machine Readable Passports validity ceased.
As a follow-up on the above, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has completed an upgrade of the current Paper-based e-passports to Polycarbonate e-passports.
Maj Gen Gowa explained that the aim of this upgrade is to ensure enhanced security features, durability as well as conforming to the standard requirements as recommended by EAC and International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)
This implies better quality, easy data verification at various airports of ICAO members states, better data protection and minimal chances of damage, as well as conforming to the standard requirements as recommended by EAC and International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The upgraded Polycarbonate passports, just like the e-paper passports have an electromagnetic chip.
This implies better quality, easy data verification at various airports of ICAO members states, better data protection and minimal chances of damage.
The Ministry has so far issued over 1,008,401 (one million eight thousand four hundred and one) e-passports since the launch December 2018. Both passports (e-paper based and e-polycarbonate) shall continue to be used until expiry or leaflets run out.
Ordinary passports take between 7-14 working days to be ready, while express Passports take 3-5 working days.
The cost of the passports remains unchanged; An ordinary Passport costs Shs250,000, while processing an express Passport attracts a fee of Shs150,000, which makes a total of Shs400,000. Official and Diplomatic passports cost Shs400,000 and Shs500,000 respectively.
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